Thursday, September 6, 2012

This Could Turn Out To Be A Bit Difficult For DoHA and NEHTA In The Long Term.

The Department of Health is re-procuring Choose and Book and wants to remove the use of Cerner Millennium so it owns the intellectual property for the system’s functionality.

The current e-booking service is built on an implementation of Cerner’s Millennium product, using the person and scheduling modules.

A Department of Health market engagement exercise document, seen by eHealth Insider, says it is looking to remove dependencies on commercial-off-the-shelf products - specifically Cerner Millennium - for the provision of business functionality and data access.

“We are interested in understanding proposals for how the existing software architecture could be modified to reduce licence/operating/change costs – for example by removal of dependencies on commercial-off-the-shelf products - for the provision of business functionality and data access and adoption of open-source products,” it says.

“The result would be that the NHS will own all the [intellectual property rights] for all Choose and Book business functionality."

The DH document says the new service should also deliver of a range of functional enhancements.

Enhanced support for commissioners and referrers could include enhanced reporting capability such as a “forward order book” or dashboards, a referral assessment service, improved training and education and enhanced advice and guidance.